Apartment Number
by Ithil
Summary: [AU, Postseries] There is an apartment in Southern California, and they live in it. A tribute to normalcy and, quite possibly, socks. TezuFuji, but only once you count to three.
1. one: sailing

**Disclaimer:** If I tried to be witty, it would turn out embarrassingly flat, so this is me, and this is me not being witty, and this is me not owning _Prince of Tennis_. We clear? Good.

**Notes:** This can be taken as AU or post-series, but because the series isn't over and we don't know what happens to our favorite whacked-out third years just yet, I figured marking it as an AU wouldn't be too far off. The setting: Tezuka and Fuji are sharing an apartment: Tezuka goes to some tennis academy or another and Fuji's mulling around with cinematography and photography and whatever he wants to, essentially. He's not picky. Oh, and they're best friends. No more, no less. Any UST you see is _totally_ your imagination flying around, la dee da.

This was originally posted on Livejournal, so I apologize if you've seen this before.

* * *

**apt#(one)**_  
sailing_

It was their first fall in California. Tezuka's studies at the tennis academy had only just began, and Fuji spent the large majority of his time strolling the grimy city streets, capturing on camera whatever suited his fancy. They shared an apartment because both sets of parents were uncomfortable with their eldest sons alone in a foreign country, and because Fuji clung to Tezuka anyway, not eager to relinquish his second favorite victim. 

On their first day living in the apartment complex, the old lady next door had rang with cookies, mistaken Fuji for a female (Tezuka turned even paler than he already was and muttered in accented English, that, actually, Fuji was a b-- to which Fuji cut in _--blossoming photographer_, and shoved Tezuka backwards), pinched Tezuka's cheeks, and promised to bring "the girls" over for a proper welcome tea. When she left, Fuji resumed unpacking, humming and nibbling on a cookie. Tezuka stared at the door in shock, then whirled on Fuji.

"The apartment complex," he said slowly, "thinks that you're a _girl_."

Fuji tilted his head to the side, smiling around the cookie between his lips. "So?"

* * *

Tezuka (and, for that matter, the entire complex) soon became accustomed to Fuji's idiosyncracies. Occasionally he went out in Tezuka's clothing, impervious to the giggles that predictably followed, and he always had his camera dangling from his neck. The old ladies eventually figured out that Fuji was male and attacked him, giggling over his soft brown hair and bright blue eyes and clear white skin, while Tezuka sighed and carried all the groceries up the stairs to their apartment, alone. 

When Fuji finally returned, he scrubbed at his face furiously in the kitchen sink; Tezuka robotically made coffee and pretended not to notice that the usually clean and elegant Fuji was somewhat disheveled.

"Yes, they kissed and fawned over me," Fuji said sweetly, not at all deceived by Tezuka's silence. "I remind them of their grandsons." He paused, as if to say that yes, he found that strange too, then resumed scrubbing.

Tezuka spared him the _I told you so_, but Fuji caught it anyway.

* * *

When tennis school finally started becoming more serious, Tezuka came home exhausted and irritable. It wasn't just the tennis - Tezuka didn't harbor much love for the English language, or, apparently, its food. He had yet to find any sort of Japanese food anywhere near his academy, and while he didn't outwardly complain about the things that the cafeteria food did to his stomach, he had cursed the cooks enough mentally to send them scurrying on laps around hell and then some, all the while carrying spiked boulders on their backs, dressed in nothing but towels. 

Tezuka wondered, sometimes, if he was spending a little bit too much time with Fuji.

Fuji's silky laughter greeted him one night, the voice teasing: "Have a good day, _Kunimitsu_?" Fuji accented every syllable and overpronounced the consonants, singsong and flippant in the way only Fuji could be; Tezuka was too drained to comment. He obediently downed Fuji's proffered cup of tea before excusing himself to the washroom.

When he returned to the kitchen for a drink, toweling off his hair, Fuji was seated at the table, wearing glasses, fuzzy sleepwear, and a soft smile, flipping through a photo album. "Fuji, it's late."

"Mmm?" Fuji rested his chin on his arm, smiling serenely. "Hungry?" he asked cheerfully, ignoring the remark. "The lady downstairs lent me a recipe for some sort of casserole, and it looks very interesting."

"Fuji," Tezuka snapped, "it's late. You should go to bed."

"My room's too cold," Fuji murmured. "Besides, you haven't answered my question."

"Liar, and no, but thank you for your concern." Tezuka poured himself a glass of water. "I'll excuse myself for the night, then. Don't stay up too late."

"I won't," Fuji said, smiling.

* * *

Tezuka's life was consumed by the tennis academy. He lived and breathed the sport, sipped tea to the rhythm of tennis balls softly hitting the ground, associated his math homework with the lines of the tennis court. Fuji was mildly amused by all this and often leaned over Tezuka's shoulder as he pored over polar coordinate planes, pointing out mistakes and whispering answers into his ear. 

"Tezuka, you need to pay more attention to your math."

Tezuka massaged his forehead. "Fuji."

"Hmm?"

"That casserole was awful."

Fuji blinked, then chuckled. "Well, it's not my fault you're so used to Japanese food. I did try to make it more Japanese, though."

"Fuji," Tezuka groaned vaguely, "wasabi does not a Japanese dish make."

Fuji just laughed.

* * *

Fuji, predictably, blended into the new country much quicker than Tezuka did - within a week, he had already absorbed more than a few of its customs (embracing them was a whole other matter; Fuji could not understand why the Americans seemed so adverse to spicy foods, though that didn't stop him from applying liberal amounts of chili he'd gotten from home all over his french fries) and had a fairly good grasp of its holidays. 

When Tezuka found out that he need not show up to the academy one Monday, Fuji explained that it was a national holiday, that this was perfectly normal. Tezuka paced around the apartment for a few hours, agitated, before Fuji laughed in exasperation and dragged him off to the apartment complex's tennis courts. They rallied for hours, Fuji marveling at how easily tennis came back to him, Tezuka wondering why more people at the school couldn't play like this, with deadly accuracy and swift, gorgeous, graceful movements, making tennis seem so much easier and more flawless than it really was.

* * *

Soon they had reached a sort of unspoken understanding; Tezuka took for granted that Fuji would be at the apartment whenever he got home, and Fuji automatically assumed that Tezuka would take care of the large majority of shopping (Tezuka had learned, early on and the hard way, that entrusting culinary matters to Fuji produced less than desirable effects, and eagerly volunteered for the task - he figured that if he didn't _buy_ ten pounds of peppers weekly, Fuji wouldn't somehow work the infuriating vegetables into otherwise perfectly innocuous miso soup). 

Fuji handled the phone; Tezuka the bills. This was more efficient than they had bargained for: telemarketers immediately ceased their calls, and their credit record was so flawless that Fuji wondered more than once if Tezuka were actually a robot.

* * *

Whenever his cell phone rang, Tezuka was immediately filled with an inexplainable need to distance himself from the offending object as quickly as possible. Between his nasty habits of nodding confirmations and sighing inaudibly in response to questions, it was a miracle that people called him at all. 

When they weren't together, Fuji called him, on the hour, every hour, simply because he could get away with it, and because Tezuka's flustered apologies when he realized that Fuji couldn't see him nodding amused Fuji to no end.

After a few days of Fuji's ceaseless phone calls, Tezuka kept his phone off unless its being on was absolutely necessary. A key factor in helping him make that decision was the fact that Fuji had somehow made the phone belt out "YUDAN SEZU NI IKOU" in shrill, panicked squeaks (with the air of someone about to be castrated, or at least subjected to intense pain) whenever the caller was Fuji. And while Tezuka found that at least somewhat amusing, he wasn't too sure that his fellow students would appreciate the humor.

When a classmate requested the use of Tezuka's phone, he had no choice but to hand it over. Tezuka resisted frowning at the young man when he smirked at the pink tennis ball keychain Fuji had superglued to the phone, but he got his payback anyway: as soon as the phone flashed its overly colorful welcome screen - _Hi, Kunimitsu! _, courtesy of one very deluded genius - Fuji called.

Tezuka wondered briefly if Fuji was psychot- _psychic_, before sighing and taking the phone from his horrified classmate.

* * *

Tezuka soon came to learn that Fuji never got sick, and when he did, recovered abnormally quickly, so when the prodigy announced one bright and early morning that he felt absolutely awful and had a fever of one-hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit - he pronounced this very, very clearly, for Tezuka's annoyed benefit - Tezuka didn't believe him until Fuji nearly fell into the pot of noodles he had been attempting to cook. 

His first instinct was to panic. His lifetime as an only child, and a sheltered one at that, hadn't prepared him in any shape or form for this. His experience as head of the Seigaku Tennis Club didn't help him at _all_ - Oishi took care of illnesses. But Oishi wasn't here now, and Tezuka was at a complete loss as to what to do. After awkwardly gathering Fuji in his arms and carefully setting him on his bed (Fuji smiled strangely at him, blue eyes wide open and slightly confused and Tezuka didn't know why; wasn't that what you were supposed to do for sick people?), Tezuka made a quick trip to the market and back.

"Take this," he ordered, unceremoniously shoving some pills and a glass of water in Fuji's face. Fuji took the medicine without complaint and smiled.

"Thank you."

Fuji fell asleep soon after, Tezuka watching him like a hawk, and it wasn't until Fuji woke up and mumbled "...zuka?" that Tezuka realized it was past noon and he was late for class.

* * *

Comments and criticism are both highly appreciated! 

_Written: October 23, 2005_


	2. two: missing

**Disclaimer:** Somehow I doubt that I need to do this again.

**Notes:** It only took me five months. Quiet.

* * *

**apt#(two)**_  
missing_

On their sixth week, Fuji discovers a Chinese supermarket, and by the seventh, he has somehow wheedled Tezuka into shopping there instead, even though it's four miles away and the cashiers speak minimal English (Japanese in Chinese supermarkets, Tezuka finds the first time, is not only nonexistent but a subject of great consternation with the butchers).

Fuji pokes through the groceries at home and notices the lack of meat immediately. "Oh," he says cheerfully, "have you decided to become a vegetarian?"

* * *

Tezuka remembers when he once fell off the ladder while changing a lightbulb in their tiny living room. (He still maintains that it was entirely Fuji's fault. No one else, he insists, is insane enough to plant plastic spiders inside the lightbulb case in order to scare the living daylights out of any potential handymen.) 

The first thing Fuji had done when he heard the crash was peer curiously into the doorway.

The second thing Fuji had done was hold up four fingers and say, very slowly, "How many, Tezuka?"

"Seven," Tezuka had growled, and when Fuji laughed and sauntered over to pretend to help him up, Tezuka yanked him down and emotionlessly sprinkled plastic spiders on his head.

* * *

Fuji won't tell you that Tezuka has a personality. He'll tell you, very seriously, that Tezuka never sleeps, speaks nine languages, has only one expression, and doesn't care about anything but tennis. 

Oishi is probably the only other person in their age demographic who would disagree, but Oishi isn't the ridiculously shy high school girl next door, who develops a massive crush on Tezuka but can never quite muster the courage to tell him. (When Fuji finally clues him in, he sends her a two-page letter apologizing for his inability to return her feelings at the moment.)

In actuality, Fuji knows that Tezuka's sleep is dreamless and sound, that he frequents a Japanese-English dictionary he keeps neatly parallel to a lamp by his bed, the face he makes whenever Fuji manages to slip horseradish into his soup, and that Tezuka can be the world's most fantastic worrywart, given the right circumstances (Fuji would fake being sick more often, if he didn't know that doing it too much would make Tezuka's head explode).

* * *

Tezuka's favorite part of living with Fuji is a measured "No comment," and the abrupt click of the telephone as he hangs up. 

Inui writes this down, then faxes the question again, but Fuji gets the message instead, writes "He's warm and fuzzy :)" in Tezuka's handwriting, and sends it back.

When he gets the reply, Inui drops his water bottle on his toes.

* * *

Tezuka doesn't think he will ever get used to the sound of Fuji doing his homework. 

Where Tezuka is quiet and studious, Fuji is fluttery and distracted; Tezuka writes in neat, straight lines, Fuji weaves intricate and ornate lines of cursive with only marginal regard for the thin blue lines on the notebook paper; Tezuka breathes, but Fuji hums contentedly, occasionally reaching over to steal Tezuka's eraser ("Fuji," Tezuka asks, exasperated, "where did you put the erasers I bought last week?").

They don't buy a computer - "It'll throw off the dynamics of the house," Fuji explains, drawing boxes in the air, "and my cacti don't appreciate being used as radiation eaters." - and Tezuka decides on the ninth day of having to walk to the public library that he hates feng shui.

* * *

Fuji's favorite part of living with Tezuka is "None of your business - oh look, Tezuka's home now," and another abrupt click. 

Inui gives up.

* * *

The first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Fuji is "indescribable." Tezuka will always associate Fuji with his tennis -- strangely beautiful, almost _lyrical_, unclassifiable, devastating, maddening. 

Tezuka would _like_ to be able to label Fuji as simply a counter-puncher: defensive, logical, cool, calculating, but Fuji defies all standards, and Tezuka never bothers himself with trivialities.

* * *

Every time Fuji remembers how mediocre a doctor Tezuka is, he can't help but smile. 

"You could've taken me to a licensed medical professional," Fuji had suggested. "He could've told you that that fever wasn't life-threatening."

Tezuka had given him a Look, then returned to his breakfast. "It was a Sunday."

"You were frantic," Fuji had said smugly.

"I was _worried_," Tezuka had corrected.

"You could've left me there to die," Fuji had said, musing. "It _was_ an option."

"Take better care of yourself," Tezuka had snapped. "So it doesn't become an option." He refocused his attention on his cereal, movements every bit as measured as they were to begin with.

Fuji had peered at him out of startled eyes for a few seconds, then looked away. "Mm."

* * *

Tezuka doesn't have any luck the second time he visits the supermarket, either. 

The butchers remember him ("You're hard to forget, Tezuka," Fuji says with a smile), so now he and Fuji go shopping together, and outside of having to triple-check the cart before going to the checkout line, Tezuka finds that he likes it better this way.

* * *

Comments and criticism are both highly appreciated! 

_Written: March 13, 2006  
_


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